companies are extensive holders of railway securities--the advocates of Socialism only condescend to say: "Who are the shareholders in the railways? Do they ever do any good in the world? They are simply using the labor of the dead in order to get the labor of the living." But is this true? The shareholders originally found the means to plan, legalise, and construct the railway, to buy the land, to pay the laborer day by day his wage, whilst yet the railway could bring no profit, to buy the materials for the permanent way, to purchase and maintain the rolling stock. Many hundreds of shareholders in unsuccessful lines have never received back one farthing of what they paid to the laborer. No laborer worked on those unsuccessful lines without wage. Some railway shareholders have got too much, but there are thousands of comparatively poor shareholders who are to be ruined by the seizure of their shares without compensation. It is not at all true that railway shareholders use "the labor of the dead in order to get the labor of the living." On the contrary, during the last few years the tendency on lines like the Midland, has been to afford the widest facilities, and the greatest possible comfort consistent with cheapness, to working-folk travelling for need or pleasure. That all railway managers are not equally far-seeing is true, that much more might be done in this direction is certain, that some managing directors are over-greedy is clear, but that the change has been for the better during the past twenty years none would deny who had any regard for truth. That railway porters, pointsmen, guards, firemen, and drivers are, as Mr. Joynes well urges, often badly paid, and nearly always overworked, is true, but making the railways State property would not necessarily improve this. The Post Office is controlled by the State for the State, and the letter-carriers and sorters are as a body disgracefully remunerated.